Orkhon Valley – Mongolia Travel Destinations
Orkhon River is the longest river that runs through Mongolia’s central and northern provinces, plays an important role in meeting the drinking water needs of people and animals and ensuring ecological balance. Besides its ecological importance, a river valley is now a protected place as the World Cultural Heritage Site by UNESCO. The Orkhon Valley Cultural Landscape lies in the central part of Mongolia, 360 km southwest of Ulaanbaatar. The valley is rich with archaeological remains, historic monuments, and cultural findings. You can explore sites with historical significance like Orkhon inscriptions, Ruins of Khar Balgas, Karakorum, Erdene Zuu Monastery, Tuvkhun Monastery and so on. The valley has been served as the seat of major political, trade, cultural and religious activities of successive nomadic empires, and as a crossroads of civilizations, linking East and West across the vast Eurasian landmass. The earliest evidence of human occupancy dates back to 40,000 – 15,000 years ago, the valley was continuously occupied throughout the prehistoric and bronze ages and early historic times, was settled successively by the Huns, Turkic peoples, the Uighurs, the Kidans, and finally the Mongols. A stele with runic inscriptions, erected in the valley by Bilge Khan, an 8th-century ruler of the Göktürk Empire, provides the first evidence of that historic role. His Ördü, or nomadic capital, unfolded twenty-five miles to the north of the stele in the shadow of the sacred forest-mountain Ötüken. During the Qidan domination of the valley, they reinscribed the stele in three languages to record the deeds of a Qidan potentate.
Besides all the historic and cultural sights, the valley is famous for its hot springs with healing properties, stunning forest-steppe landscapes with freely grazing animals through the bank of turquoise blue rivers in this vast beautiful valley between sumptuous green mounts of Khangay Mountains Ranges.
Way To Nomads
7 November 2021
Travel Destinations
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